I love Francis Schaeffer. For my money, there is no one better to express deep thoughts about the Christian worldview, fully and briefly. Reading Schaeffer is like savoring a good meal. I plan to read a lot more of him.

First of all, cool cover. Maybe the best ever.

More than this A Christian Manifesto looks at the theological basis for government and examines the Christian's responsibility toward government that is failing its responsibility to uphold justice. The first fifty pages or so are classic Schaeffer. Biblical philosophy is brought to bear on the origin of government; justice exists outside of law, and so governments are liable to rule on the basis of what is right. Law, on the contrary, does not determine what is right, it only upholds it. Loved it.

Still, where I was excited and challenged by the opening chapters, I lost interest in the last two-thirds. There Schaeffer argues that Christians have the duty to resist unjust or immoral governments. I just didn't buy into public protest as civil disobedience in the US. Too little is said to establish what exactly demands resistance and how far to go. Abortion was the case-in-point, and the book didn't reach much beyond that. Really, I was hoping that the book would shape my thinking of how Christians should participate in politics, but was left wanting.

At the same time, "Christian Manifesto" is worth the read because Schaeffer still provides a great deal of food for thought in just around 140 pages. Though the book is full of legal citations from the early 1980's, Schaeffer was ahead of his time in anticipating the post-modern worldview that we know so well today. His ideas are always challenging, and even where you disagree you will find your worldview sharpened.

Great work from a great mind. Thoroughly readable and challenging. This is part of my law school curriculum but it was a personal choice to read long before. Recommended for everyone.

An incredible book that I first read back in eighth grade, A Christian Manifesto is Schaeffer's examination of the conflict between the Christian worldview versus the humanistic worldview as it plays out in law and government. It is that shift in worldview which Schaeffer identifies as the fundamental issue in our culture today - and the fact that far too many Christians are fighting this war on various battlefronts, missing the totality of the conflict in which they are ultimately engaged! The battle, according to Schaeffer, is a conflict over Truth, whether there is a comprehensive and absolute Truth about all reality or not.



Schaeffer does an excellent job of reviewing human history and demonstrating clearly and convincingly that Christians have in almost every generation and every culture been at the heart of this continuous battle for truth. Setting the stage from the Protestant Reformation, Schaeffer then turns to the uniqueness of the legal and governmental status found in the United States - a government established on the principle that God supersedes law and that law supersedes man. But, warns Schaeffer, that uniqueness has been slowly eroded away by the humanist worldview and its invasion of the public policy arena with the fallacy that the state is supreme in the absence of the existence of God.



Schaeffer encourages Christians to be an active presence in the political process - and warns that when the state violates the liberties granted by God, civil disobedience is not only an option, but a commandment as well - to submit to an authority in clear violation of Biblical principles is not an option for a follower of Christ - "citizens have a moral obligation to resist unjust and tyrannical government," he writes.



Looking at the United States in the early 1980s, Schaeffer sees a window of opportunity for Christians to make their presence felt in the process, but warns that this window is slowly closing. Schaeffer uses the issue of abortion as his example of an issue where Christians must be a part of the solution, and gives various strategies that can be employed to make a difference in the culture on this particular travesty of humanistic reasoning.



A Christian Manifesto is a great read, especially for a Christian who wants to engage their culture for Christ in the public policy arena. Schaeffer's reasoning is solid, challenging and relevant even today!

I highly recommend this work.
It is similar to other Schaeffer works, that is to say, exceptional, brilliant, thought-provoking.
Explains Romans 13 so that Erastian Christians can stop their state-worshipping and get on with serving the Lord more Scripturally, less worldily. The Scottish Covenanters had it right; Jehoiada had it right; Schaeffer had it right.

Francis Schaeffer had amazing insight into the world around him. He looked around and made predictions that others thought impossible to ever come true. He tied together causes that others disregarded. He described a coming world view that others comsidered extreme and alarmist.

Now . . . it has come to pass. Many today will read this book and have trouble believing that Schaeffer's world ever existed. To others, Schaeffer's words will seem as if they were penned only yesterday. Some will probably call him immoral. Others will call him a prophet. He is certainly politically incorrect.

And all of this change happened in the span of about 20 years. This book was penned in 1981. You owe it to yourself to pick up a copy of this book and look around at the change that has happened to society. It is sobering.

Schaeffer wrote his Christian Manifesto as an antithesis to the Communist Manifesto. He imagined the logical progression of a world built upon a morality other than God. Imagine if you will, what a world would be like if the government totally removed God as the basis for law and morality. It might be like a snowball rolling down a long hill with nothing to stop it. What would be the results way down the hill into the far future? How could the snowball ever be stopped once it reached critical mass? How long before it reached critical mass? How should Christians react to this changing world?